1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mail processing system; and in particular, to a modular mail processing method and control system for sorting incoming, outgoing, and internal mail.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Traditionally, mail processing systems are custom systems designed for a particular customer's needs. These systems are typically designed for high volume installations such as those that sort 30,000 to 40,000 pieces of mail per hour. With such large installations, custom designs to process either outgoing mail or internal mail are economically feasible. In these designs, the mail processing machinery and associated control system are fixed designs for the installation and are not easily modified for either future requirements or for the needs of other installations. Such custom designs are not economically practical for smaller installations that process in the range of 20,000 to 100,000 pieces of mail per day. Thus, there exists a demand for a low cost, flexible processing system that can be inexpensively and quickly reconfigured to meet the needs of such low volume installations.
Additionally, corporate and institutional mail rooms, which primarily constitute these smaller installations, typically maintain large staffs for handling the mail that must be processed daily. The type of mail processed by the typical corporate or institutional mail room includes internal mail, which originates within the organization and has a destination also within the organization, incoming mail, which comes into the organization from external sources, and outgoing mail, which originates within the organization and has a destination external to the organization. Moreover, in the typical corporate or institutional mail room, 60% of the daily mail is internal, 35% is incoming, and 5% is outgoing. Therefore, in order to be practical, mail processing systems for these smaller installations should be capable of sorting the organization's internal and incoming mail into bins corresponding to internal mail stops as well as sorting the organization's outgoing mail.